Rs. 747-crore Water Metro to be commissioned in 2019

Wednesday, 06 December 2017 07:13
administrator

The Hindu 06.12.2017

Rs. 747-crore Water Metro to be commissioned in 2019

Tender to manufacture 78 modern ferries to be floated on December 31

The tender to manufacture 78 modern ferries for the Rs. 747-crore
Water Metro project in the Greater Kochi area will be floated on
December 31, and the project will be commissioned on April 14, 2019,
A.P.M. Mohammed Hanish, Managing Director of Kochi Metro Rail Limited
(KMRL), has said.

The material to be used (the body type) and the
propulsion system are almost finalised. The tender will be finalised in
March-April 2018. The first batch of ferries are most likely be deployed
in the Ernakulam-West Kochi area, thus covering areas in the Smart
Cities Mission. Cleaning of navigable waterbodies and canals would go
hand in hand with the induction of the ferries, he said. Mr. Hanish is
also the CEO of Cochin Smart Mission.

The project, a waterway
extension of Kochi metro, envisages 78 fast, fuel-efficient ferries
operating in 15 routes. The total distance covered will be 75 km, dotted
by 38 jetties. All the ferries will be inducted by 2021.

“The
project’s environment-impact assessment (EIA) report has been given (to
the Centre). A high-level meeting was held recently to speed up
acquisition of land to house jetties,” Mr. Hanish added, while
addressing mediapersons here on Tuesday.

Officials of German
funding agency KfW, which is lending 85 million Euros (appr. Rs. 585
crore) for Water Metro, too were present. They also visited sites on the
corridor. They offered support to the Cochin Smart Mission. Another
German delegation from GIZ, which has experts on urban transportation
and sanitation, too is visiting Kochi.

Answering a question on
augmenting non-ticketing revenue for Kochi metro, Mr. Hanish said that
both exterior and interior of metro trains would shortly begin sporting
advertisements. Metro sources said that a tender permitting ‘wrapping’
of commercial advertisements on the sides of each train and digital
display of advertisements within trains would be awarded shortly. While
metro pillars have begun to sport advertisements, they will soon be
placed within metro stations too.

Efforts are also under way to
garner revenue from station-naming rights, wherein the name of brands
will suffix the name of metro stations. Talks are under way with PWD
(which owns the land) to speed up development of an integrated (housing
cum commercial and recreational) Metro City in 18 acres of land at
Kakkanad. Yet another mode to get revenue (for metro’s operation and
maintenance) was a Metro Village planned in over 100 acres of land at
Muttom, Mr. Hanish said.

MoU inked

Earlier, KMRL
inked an MoU with the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) and
Kochi Corporation, which specifies the modalities of maintaining the
walkway cum cycle track at Panampilly Nagar for a period of five years.
The metro agency thus gets revenue from film shooting and other sources
for meeting its maintenance cost.

A committee that will be formed
for monitoring and coordinating the maintenance will comprise nominees
from each of the three agencies and also from residents’ associations.

C.N.
Mohanan, Chairman of the GCDA, said that Kochi needed modern public
infrastructure since it was readying to host Under-20 FIFA World Cup
matches. Mr. Hanish was the nodal officer for Under-17 FIFA matches that
the city hosted in November.

The project’s environment-impact assessment report has been given to the Centre